36 replies to this topic

[Reported for Inappropriate Name]

look,
add an energy output to engines, and maybe have a class dependent modifier. Then when the loadout exceeds this output,make weapons recharge slower and when you fire a bunch at once penalize weapon recharge even more.

All you have to do is make wait times on the most cancerous boats worse than they would be if they waited for the cooldown. You can even go so far as to add quirks on mechs, like for example, the fafnir, which would get an energy cost reduction for heavy gauss so that it can run two of them without incurring a penalty.

stuff like that. Then you dont need ghost heat because you make these artillery-like mechs super vulnerable without some form of front line support. Without removing the ability to boat entirely. You would just need an engine big enough to mitigate the cooldown penalties which would in-turn limit what can be effectively boated. So for example someone could fire 6 large lasers at once if they have the heat cap for it, but even in an assault that would be at least, what, 6 times the cooldown of the base value calculated by the engine and the mech size in comparison to the "power draw" of the loadout? I mean that's not a concrete number but it's worth playing with on internal.

Edited by Battlecruiser, 24 May 2018 - 09:01 AM.

[Reno Blade]

My comments to some of the "other solutions" being mentioned here:

1. More Armor
Sure it will help to increase TTK a bit, but it will not deal with the huge gap of boats vs non-boats.
Min-Max is only increased in importance if you need to deal even more dmg to focus someone.
Maybe the high heat of laser vom or dakka spam will reduce the efficiency to take your target out as quick as now, but on the other hand the non-maxed builds will have a larger gap, as they fall behind even more in "killing speed".

2. More Reload time (Energy Draw effect replacement)
While it will reduce DPS in a similar way that the heat spikes would do, it would have a lower affect on mechs that can boot many weapons, as heat would do, so it might be advantage over the heat-only penalties.

3. Nerfing Chassis/mechs only
This is very counter productive. Would you ever play a Nova with -20% quirks on lasers?
I know a lot of people dislike the negative quirks on the Timberwolf, because it was nerfed to compensate for its superior combination of agility, speed, weaponry and armor (being at that sweet spot).
Even not-recieving quirks is too much for some people to feel gimped.
I doubt that anyone could really like this way of nerfing.

4. Low heat cap, high dissipation
It was mentioned probably as often as asked for. You will get builds (even energy) that will run cool and max DPS without consider heat an issue and it will be a nightmare to balance balistic heat at all.
If you don't put the dissipation higher, the low cap could be one thing, but on the other hand we already have the people who want to use the "stock" loadout without shutting down (or triggering GH and then shut down), such as the Blood Asp stock builds, or even the Nova and Hunchback 4P.


So, imho, we don't need to always aim for exactly 30 dmg, but the main goal should be to reduce the gap between boating and non-boating.
I would personally prefere if we had a lot more changes than to do one thing at a time (e.g. nerf CLan lasers now, then wait another 3 months for whatever change).

Going by the goal of lower the gap of boating vs non-boating, I would use some kind of Energy Draw system that gives low-med heat, duration and cooldown penalties, also add Heat-effects (such as slowing aiming/movement over 50% heat), but at the same time increase the single-weapon stats to make low-hp build more useable.
The heat penalties should be over time instead of instant, so you are "stacking" your heat over time debuff.

Heck, with this, we could even increase the heat cap, because you get penalties for being over 50% heat.
The only tweaks then would be the "limit" to trigger the first penalties and the amount (to reduce huge spikes).

[Revis Volek]

The stats page is just about 100% useless. After 6 yrs the stats are so screwy they literally mean nothing.


PGI doesnt not know how to gather data and the data they do gather they cannot interpret anything anyway. They need have all the info they need i would think at their finger tips but they gotta get some peeps who can use it properly.

Mobility i think is one of the greatest balancing tools we have, giving the ability to shed dmg and take it where you want it is paramount in this game but PGI has no idea what torso twisting even is.

Viktor Drake, on 24 May 2018 - 06:03 AM, said:

Or just increase armor. I mean if they added 50% armor to all mechs, TTK would go way up and it wouldn't involve changing one thing about weapons and how they were.

Terrible idea. and you will surely have to go back and touch weapons. Doubling armor values would make teh game feel like a pillow fight.
.

Edited by Revis Volek, 27 May 2018 - 07:56 AM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Revis Volek, on 27 May 2018 - 07:53 AM, said:

Terrible idea. and you will surely have to go back and touch weapons. Doubling armor values would make teh game feel like a pillow fight.

So is adding Ghost heat penalties to all the Clan energy weapons. Seriously though, I didn't mention it was a good idea, I just mentioned it would have a dramatic effect on TTK.

As for myself, I have mentioned several times that I am in the "Leave things as they are" club. People are making a mount out of a mole hill right now and it will only lead to another mole hill that will be turned into a mountain later on when the new meta come along out of the changes. Many people have said this but I will say it again. People will always find the most efficient way to play the game, that is just in our nature. Change something today and tomorrow there will be something to take its place and the forums will be complaining about Ballistics or Missiles or Mobility or something. There just comes a time when you need to say, "Stop, no more" and focus on other things and we have been well past that point for quite some time now.

[Scyther]

I'm not sure what the current flavors of "OP" are considered to be. Generally, Laser Vomit has always been one type, Gauss+PPC another. I guess recently we have added MG boating, and I'm not sure if any Dakka builds are currently considered unreasonably effective since they nerfed everything to deal with the Kodiaks.

Could we get some sort of list as to what things actually currently are outliers in the 'combat effectiveness' arena?

[process]

Reno Blade, on 27 May 2018 - 06:22 AM, said:

4. Low heat cap, high dissipation
It was mentioned probably as often as asked for. You will get builds (even energy) that will run cool and max DPS without consider heat an issue and it will be a nightmare to balance balistic heat at all.
If you don't put the dissipation higher, the low cap could be one thing, but on the other hand we already have the people who want to use the "stock" loadout without shutting down (or triggering GH and then shut down), such as the Blood Asp stock builds, or even the Nova and Hunchback 4P.

The low heat cap is only intended to limit high energy alpha damage. Energy weapons generally have the most efficient damage/ton, but at the cost of heat. The problem currently is that heat capacity is in abundance. Lowering the heat cap would bring energy weapons in alignment with ballistics and missiles.

From there, we would obviously need to revisit energy DPH and DPS to make sure they are in-line with other weapon categories, unlike the present even with ghost heat.

I would also want to revisit the heatsink system, by make DHS do true 2.0 dissipation, SHS and DHS provide zero additional capacity, and give all mechs, regardless of SHS or DHS, 2.0 dissipation for the 10 engine heatsinks. This would help certainly improve stock builds and gives some extra benefit to niche SHS builds.

[BTGbullseye]

MadBadger, on 27 May 2018 - 08:41 AM, said:

I'm not sure what the current flavors of "OP" are considered to be. Generally, Laser Vomit has always been one type, Gauss+PPC another. I guess recently we have added MG boating, and I'm not sure if any Dakka builds are currently considered unreasonably effective since they nerfed everything to deal with the Kodiaks.

Could we get some sort of list as to what things actually currently are outliers in the 'combat effectiveness' arena?

UAC boating, (4x10, 2x5 + 2x10, 5x5) and dual Heavy Gauss is about the only thing that is truly outperforming. (I would have trouble calling it overpowered though, unless you're in Solaris) Everything else is pretty well balanced.

Edited by BTGbullseye, 27 May 2018 - 12:40 PM.

[Luminis]

BTGbullseye, on 27 May 2018 - 12:39 PM, said:

UAC boating, (4x10, 2x5 + 2x10, 5x5) and dual Heavy Gauss is about the only thing that is truly outperforming. (I would have trouble calling it overpowered though, unless you're in Solaris) Everything else is pretty well balanced.

I disagree on the 2HGR, at least in Solaris. In Solaris, all 2HGR Mechs will face Annis that do stuff like LB50, maybe LB60, even. They're outclassed in DPS and when ammo isn't a concern, boating regular ballistics nets you a rather similar alpha and much higher sustained DPS. Also, facing almost solely Assault Mechs, you don't get the squishy targets like slow Mediums or damaged (Clan) Heavies you can oneshot, so there's that.

In QP, their range and the fact that most 2HGR Mechs go like 50kph is a seriously limiting factor, even though their ability to delete components instantly - on lighter or damaged Mechs - is pretty insane.

[Reno Blade]

To give you a quick comparison of the HLL with GH limit of 2 vs GH limit of 1:

You would generate 5.7 more heat with the lower limit if you fire 2 HLL together (thats 18% more total heat).
so a total of 2x 16 + 5.7 = 37.76 heat for 2 cHLL

And the same additional 5.7 heat on 3 HLL on top of the already added 12.96 ofc (thats 9% more total heat increase over the existing 27% GH, or 39% compared with no GH).
so a total of 66,72 heat for 3 cHLL.

The change is not even the heat of one cERML (6.3 heat), and everyone blames the cHLL will be no longer used.
Baseless QQing.

Its a totally different story if we are merging ML and HLL groups for GH.
Then 2x cERML + 1x cHLL would have the penalty of 3x HLL, (so the mentioned 5.7 + 12.96 = 18.72 penalty heat).
That would make a total of 2x 6.3 (cERML) + 1x 16 (cHLL) + 18.72 (GH for 3 cHLL) = 47.32 heat total instead of only 28.6 heat.

[Reno Blade]

So coming back to one suggestion from another post to reduce heat by about 20% and dmg by about 15% for all Clan lasers, but increase GH limit of cERLL and cLPL to 3x instead of 2x, while keeping cHLL to 2x.

The HLL GH values:
- w/o penalty (dark blue): Base heat of 16, so without GH you could fire 3x HLL to generate "only" 48 heat
- w/ penalty (red): GH limit changed to 1x, so you already have the mentioned 5.7 additional heat on the 2nd HLL
- Before (light blue): the current GH values Base heat of 16 with GH multiplier of 4.5
- Low heat HLL (orange): new curve using 13 base heat instead of 16 and the current GH multiplier of 4.5 and max of 1x HLL limit, so you generate 4.68 extra heat on the 2nd HLL, but would be still below the current 2x HLL (without GH) with 30.68 heat instead of 32 heat.
(with a GH limit of 3x, the HLL would be at 39 heat for 3x HLL)


So my suggestion (lower heat and dmg, shared GH, but higher max limit for larges) from here could be an alternative:

Reno Blade, on 28 May 2018 - 11:00 AM, said:

It may be even better to combine these ideas.

1a. Reduce damage by ~15% for each Clan Laser
1b. but also reduce heat by ~20% for each Clan Laser
Edit: smalls might even be buffed back a bit

2a. Combine GH groups of Large lasers to the other lasers (already combined med+smalls)
2b. Increase GH limit of larges to 3x

The expected result would be more builds with 3x Large + Gauss and less builds with 2x Large + 6x Med (+Gauss).
And also the 6 Meds + Gauss would be slightly weaker without forcing 4 meds only.
To have a lower total damage, but a broader aray of builds.

In addition, if you are willing to split your volley in multiple groups, you can still field builds with lots of laser, but need to split and you could even use builds with 6 larges (e.g. supernova stock) with a 3+3 combo volley, rather than having a 2+6 alpha vomit.

[Mystere]

Viktor Drake, on 23 May 2018 - 01:31 PM, said:

I vote we just stop F'ing around with thing and deal with the fact that the game is never going to be perfectly balanced no matter what method we use and let PGI get on to adding new maps and game mode or whatever.

^^^^^ This! ^^^^^

Just how much more time, money, staff, and other very limited resources have to be wasted, all in this futile pursuit of so-called "balance", all to the detriment of all the other aspects of the game?

MechaBattler, on 23 May 2018 - 04:16 PM, said:

I'm just pointing out the supposed problem that PGI highlighted for the change. It's possible it's just an excuse to continue lower damage to raise TTK.

In my view, all of these "balance" changes are nothing but excuses to keep MWO as minimally-viable a product as it has always been for the last five years or so.

Edited by Mystere, 31 May 2018 - 04:59 PM.

[MechaBattler]

Mystere, on 31 May 2018 - 04:53 PM, said:

^^^^^ This! ^^^^^

Just how much more time, money, staff, and other very limited resources have to be wasted, all in this futile pursuit of so-called "balance", all to the detriment of all the other aspects of the game?




In my view, all of these "balance" changes are nothing but excuses to keep MWO as minimally-viable a product as it has always been for the last five years or so.

Well considering the steep learning curve and the bad matchmaker. Having bad balance isn't going to help the game's viability.

[LordNothing]

to be fair balance tweaks are very low hanging fruit. thats why pgi does them. to show that they are working on the game without actually having to do anything more than some minor data entry. the thing that really costs devtime is the terrible hardpoint system that requires every mech model in the game be modified every time they want to add weapons or addons. every time i see the word "retrofit" in a patch notes i cringe. i have experience 3d modeling and i know how much it sucks to retrofit stuff into old models.

Edited by LordNothing, 31 May 2018 - 07:39 PM.

[Mystere]

Viktor Drake, on 24 May 2018 - 06:03 AM, said:

Or just increase armor. I mean if they added 50% armor to all mechs, TTK would go way up and it wouldn't involve changing one thing about weapons and how they were.

Adding X% armor to all mechs just screws the lighter ones.

Viktor Drake, on 27 May 2018 - 08:23 AM, said:

Seriously though, I didn't mention it was a good idea, I just mentioned it would have a dramatic effect on TTK.

So why even make the suggestion?

Edited by Mystere, 31 May 2018 - 07:48 PM.

[Mystere]

MechaBattler, on 31 May 2018 - 07:28 PM, said:

Well considering the steep learning curve and the bad matchmaker. Having bad balance isn't going to help the game's viability.

Balance has never been one of the game's top reasons for the lack of viability.

[MechaBattler]

Mystere, on 31 May 2018 - 07:51 PM, said:

Balance has never been one of the game's top reasons for the lack of viability.

I think imbalance makes the learning curve steeper.

[Reno Blade]

While the discussions around balance was/is in a high (with Paul's/Chris's posts and the Community suggestion), there are few more possible options which could be considered as alternative to the hard-limits.

Most people dislike GH and Energy Draw because of the spiky nature of the heat penalties.
So one idea is to create a heat-over-time effect instead of instant heat spikes.

Let's assume you fire your 2x AC20 for 2x6 heat and additional 11.52 heat penalty.
The HoT design could use your 11.52 heat penalty over 5 seconds (or even 10s), which would be about 2.3 heat / second.
Now fire the dual AC20 again after 4s and you get another 11.52 heat over 5s, so you would get the first second with 2x 2.3heat/sec because there is still one second left of the first HoT.

And if we use Energy Draw instead of Ghost Heat, the amounts are much more granular dependent on your weapon choices and not as binary as GH with the 0.5sec window and limited weapons.

The overall experience would be much smoother and the UI could be much easier to understand:
Take Mechwarrior2 heat/second buildup HUD display (dH/dT):

Blue = enough energy, yellow/red = heat over time building up.
As long as you are above the max of the energy bar, you would generate constant heat/sec.